It appears that dual dagger combo is the most popular by quite a large margin on other forums. Is anyone going to roll primarily with dual pistols like myself? Or am I alone in this?

Are these other forums talking about PVP, or solo PVE? The only real issue with melee is in large scale DEs/Boss fights, where you can get instantly hit for 3k hp at level 14 with very little telegraphing that is further obscured by tons of spell effects splashing around. Some of issues are balance based, some are probably bugged (the very hard hitting low level group event bosses). Event scaling definitely needs tweaking for a few reasons.

In PVP daggers are amazingly good. The damage is substantially higher than any other options and it's easy to deal it out with a dagger/initiative based build. In solo/small-scale PVE you can drop targets very quickly or circle strafe constantly and not have to deal with some of the drawbacks of melee. I tend to swap around in PVE as needed. I really enjoyed pistol/dagger and pistol/pistol for soloing. I also used shortbow for AoE, and the teleport. I had dagger/dagger available if I felt like meleeing, which I did often. I'm hoping they make using a sword more appealing.

In pve I felt pressured into ranged so I was rolling pistol/pistol and shortbow. When I decided to do melee in melee I enjoyed sword/dagger quite nicely. In pvp I tried every combo but I felt most comfortable with dagger/pistol and shortbow.

http://gw2.luna-atra.fr/skills_tool/...ff0f8b8c929lj9 for pvp
I know I was low on HP, next beta I will experiment a little more but with this build i felt like i could keep people dazed or blinded... or just keep myself stealthed that I didn't take so much damage. That and running away was always an option... and I did a lot.

Heartseeker was good damage with the tied in execute. Shadowshot for the gap closer. Blackpowder and headshot for utility and control. Caltrops for either keeping people slowed and me on top of them or for retreat... and omg I loved smoke screen for get aways it was an amazing ability. Especially dropping it in a door way or hallway. Short bow was primarily used for running away or using infiltrator's arrow to port myself through a roof or something. So I probably could have dropped it, would most likely take pistol/pistol in its place.

I really enjoyed it. At first I thought stealing was just a way to get to your target. Then I realized that it is so much more. If you use the item that you steal, more times then not it has great benefit. And it doesnt cost anything! Also with the trait "Mug" that damages on steal, I will crit for around 6k on a steal and then another 4 k with the stolen item. I usually open with both venoms applies which turns them into stone so I can get some nice shots off.

I know that the trickery tree was least attractive for me other than the initiative gain. But after trying it out, I really enjoyed having Steal as my main source of damage.

Facts:
thieves init is upped to 12, many abilities have increased cost
cloak and dagger only triggers stealth if you hit
whenever you are hit or leave stealth you get “revealed” which makes you immune to any NEW incoming stealth effects (this applies to any other profession, such as the elementalist affected by your shadow refuge pulses)
thieves guild summons 2 thieves after a 2 second casting. One thief with dagger/dagger the other with pistol/pistol. At least one of them appears to have either blinding powder or smoke screen. They both have a non-trivial amount of hp about on par with a mesmer clone (not phantasm) seems each has approx half of the thief's health. Unknown if stat bonuses affect the thieves. They do get downscaled in level. They last for I think 15 seconds
all venoms are transferred via venomous aura
the trait venomous strength will apply to any allies affected by your venomous aura trait, that is if you hit spider venom and it is applied to the guy standing to your left, both you and they gain 1 stack of might. This behavior implies that the trait residual venom will do the same
basilisk venom is not a condition, it is not lengthened by + condition duration
scorpion wire at this time sometimes bugs out when pulling an enemy over the crest of the hill. When this happens they stop at the point where the hill starts to curve down (note this is when you have line of effect on the target, the wire hits, and they are still pulled, but not all the way
the downed skill smoke bomb can teleport you ignoring the Z axis, that is you can teleport up the stairs in the clocktower in kyhlo or even under the world (my case was into water, which I was able to rally from but had to waypoint out of since I was trapped inside the terrain)
infusion of shadow only triggers when you successfully enter stealth, not when you use a move that tries to cause it.
You cant shadow step across gaps
you can evade over gaps

My analysis:
after logging over 40 hours playing a thief and reaching lvl 30 and playing a few bouts of hot-join pvp here are my thoughts on the thief profession

Dagger/Dagger
this is the go-to spec for most thieves, the straight up melee damage dealer. No shit right? I find that it is the most complete and well built weapon setup for the thief. It has 2 strong aoe options (LDB and dancing), a strong single target attack (heartseeker) and a useful 1 chain (apply weakness to help you die less) and lets not forget CnD to allow stealth use. dancing allows gap closing or returning from evades (such as roll or withdraw) and in a pinch can be used for non-trivial raw ranged damage. Heartseker really shines with some of the combos it can proc, notably chaos armor, fire shield, and the water-> leap CPC that splashes healing most of the time I would use a heartseeker over a LDB just to gain a specific CPC effect (read: stealing throw gunk for chaos armor) even with enemies near full health. This weapon setup has high damage compression compared to other weapons esp when utilizing stealth skills. Heartseeker + executioner trait is just plain deadly on low health targets and can help you gain an edge on profs that are designed to outlast, namely necros

Dagger/Pistol
Sacrifices the raw damage output of a readily accessible stealth for the utility of the offhand pistol shots. Probably the closest thing to a switch-hitter for the thief but the ranged attacks are pretty punishing on your init. If you want to keep the strong spike damage from dagger but be able to shoot off dazes to assist allies go for this. Not the most complete package for the thief but shadow shot is a really good gap closer, gives you a bit of breathing room with the blind it applies and black powder can be hit for even more blind, which can be useful on these “hard DEs” ive heard so much about. If you want to have a few support options but still maintain fairly significant melee this is a good option. its worth noting this spec CAN combo into stealth (black powder-> heartseeker) but it takes up 9 init to do so, not worth it for damage purposes in many cases

Sword/Dagger
if you want to play the “super dodge spec” this is the setup you want. Between flanking strike and infiltrators strike you get a large amount of mobility, adding withdraw and haste and traiting into acrobatics just makes you more of a dick. CnD allows easy access to tactical strike which if you can pull it off is really strong control (they are dazed and after that daze they have to deal with blind) dancing dagger is here again for snares, gap closing (to get into infiltrator's strike range) or raw ranged damage like I listed for D/D. The one major gripe I have with sword is infiltrator's strike, a lot of times it feels like an empty skill slot since if you dont have to worry about conditions or cant get to a position to “jump in” its pretty useless. I would rather have the initiative cost of shadow return (the skill you get after shadow stepping with infiltrator's strike) taken off and placed onto infiltrator's making it a total of 4 (probably just 3 is fine) init to cast, but making return free. Overall this is probably the second most complete package for the thief

Sword/pistol
to me this was the least complete of the weapon setups. Theres too much discord between the dual skill and the offhand pistol skills. The setup carries 2 “interrupts” but pistol whip got knocked down to a ¼ stun really making the attack underwhelming, its a compromise between control and damage. This weapon setup is the most “control” of them all, but there seems to be too much interference with the available skills. If you have the uber micro required to head shot a guy attacking your buddy at ranged and then switch back for a pistol whip on the one you're fighting who also decided to also use their big skill it might work out well but overall I think this setup needs the most work out of our land combat weapons

Pistol/Dagger
to me I ended up using this as the “dps pistol” spec. using CnD to gain stealth and sneak attack for the bleed. It does have the benefit with Dancing and CnD of giving you a strong kite skill or the option to stealth when something does manage to catch up to you (like a warrior) so you cover your bases pretty well. A little bit of not knowing what this spec wants to do but could be worse. If anything this would be a good 2nd weapon set for a primarily ranged thief

Pistol/Pistol
this was the second most common thief setup I saw. It gets the job it wants to do done but again it feels like its not a complete package. The first 3 skills are clearly damage oriented but they dont really play off each other much, body shot gives a stack of vuln for unload but other than that theres not much interplay between the skills. Black powder and headshot are there for defense but dont really “set up” for other skills like a dagger offhand does. Personally the only reason i'd go P/P over P/D is the dual skill, unload. That being said if you think you can micro the ranged interrupts with the daze then it's a good choice, similar to the utility ranger meta build from GW1

Shortbow
this is the ranged aoe weapon for the thief, nothing too special. Theres a little bit of play between the skills but it mostly relies on choking gas placing a poison field. Cluster bomb's large arc makes hitting the poison field for a burst combo difficult at longer ranges. Infiltrator's arrow's blind effect is a nice touch but I dont ever recall wanting to use it for the blind effect, so its kind of wasted in a lot of situations/ was not a fan of disabling shot's placement, would rather have it as the 4 skill than the 3 but that's just me. A decent weapon in terms of “fun” and really really good if you need to bring heavy aoe to the situation.

Underwater:
I didnt like either of the thief UW weapons. Id like them to redo both of them to make them more fun

Spear: really really boring weapon, shadow assault is kind of cool and flanking lets you avoid a lot of hits but I couldnt stick with this for more than 4 mins at a time. I know that's not informative at all, sorry. they can make it less boring if they gave the 3 skill the ability to launch when you successfully retaliated, then you could tow line back into them

speargun: slightly better than the spear since you can combo disabling shot and escape together to force an NPC to walk through as much poison as possible but the poison effect is barely visible and 9/10 times it didnt seem like they swam through the line

Steal: I found this skill to be far more useful than I thought but not for the reasons you guys thought (applying buffs) I found the stolen items to be EXTREMELY useful and always tried to grab something extra to use. Most of the time you get something thats actually useful (except for a branch from oakhearts, apparently you cant launch those). Some very notable steals are as follows

Throw Gunk: my favorite steal, gives you a blob that causes a condition but more importantly gives an ethereal field which you can heartseeker onto for a chaos armor

throw tuft/throw feathers: a really common steal from anything with fur, gives you another method to enter stealth and feathers has a blind to boot

eat egg: huge heal and restores 10 initiative, awesome to hang onto throughout multiple battles until you need it

throw scale: a ranged bleed and poison, very awesome

my advice with steal is to memorize each steal icon so you can know what you've got instantly, become familiar with as many as you can so you can think of useful ways to use the steal. One of the coolest steals I did is I had a necro try to attack me when I was solo on the treb and it was an MM, I stole a skull from them, waited until the necro got low and when the minions clustered on me I feared them and finished the necro off. Theres almost always something useful you can use with a steal so if you're having trouble with using steals I suggest something other than thief. It REALLY gives you a massive edge

Healing:

withdraw: I used this skill the most, its really nice since you can use it very often and it happens near instantly (no cast time) and gets you out of trouble. Just make sure nothing's behind you. Id recommend this for a heavy acro build purely for the synergy, even tho hide in shadows would technically benefit more from the trait bonuses. I strongly advise against using this in the water unless you are really comfortable with your positioning in water

Hide in Shadows: decent heal, I dont think it's affected by compassion (though compassion might add an instant heal since theres a listing of healing:0, never saw it increase but tooltips werent 100% accurate) since it applies a boon that does the healing. Great for underwater healing though. If you go acrobatics heavy you might want to consider this for the extra boon duration

signet of malice: I only used this skill once during the whole beta, if you run a signet build it could be useful but im not a fan at all. Probably better with faster hitting weapons, such as dagger MH or dual pistols (unload)

prayer to dwayna HUMAN ONLY: this is pretty much a massive heal with no additional gimmicks, great all around heal but note it has a cast time. Cant use it in pvp

Utility:

Blinding powder: wish I had picked this up earlier, really really awesome skill esp for groups, 5s blinds and stealths the thief, stealth heavy build will love this and your groups will love the blind. Shame you cant aim the effect

Shadow refuge: the thief's aoe heal, this one you can aim, use it to save your buddy's asses. The stealth pulses every second so be aware of that (you can enter it after it goes out and still get stealthed). Really nice skill, better than I expected it to be. Quickly became a staple skill for me in many situations, even solo

Scorpion wire: really useful against DE bosses that have persistent AoE's just yank them out and go to town on them. Can also be used to save your buddy's ass from that rampaging centaur. While it's very useful, when soloing its kind of hit or miss. If you have to do surgical pulling slot it in, otherwise might want to grab something else

Roll for initiative: great if you want another rush of init to keep spiking a target down. As with withdraw, watch your ass for things behind you. Both this and withdraw can be used as a gap closer if you flick your camera around, evade back, then flip back around. think disengage

Elite:
thieves guild:
I kind of covered this with my fact dump. this really gives you massive spike damage. One good use of this skill is on one of the structured maps (I forgot the name but its not kyhlo) there is an NPC you can kill for 50 score and a 30 second +50 stat buff, just switch to this skill out of combat then use the thieves to help muscle the NPC down. This also works on the nornbear (Svanir) in the same map

Basilisk venom: if you;re running a venom aura thief in pvp this skill is amazing in groups since it lets you freeze up multiple enemies. Take improvised venoms too so you can try to get a free use of this when you steal

I played with dagger storm in the lobby but I never wanted to use it in pvp since most encounters were 1v1 or 1v2, 2v2 max. that being said if you make a female human thief named “Katarina” you are required to have this elite 24/7/365 (including leap days)

didnt get to try the other elites since they werent available in pvp and I only bought thieves guild in pve

in the end this is my current projected build structure at 80 for most pve environments

the high amount of traits in crit lets me slot in pistol traits if required to go range heavy, shadow allows for a shortbow trait if that's needed and overall the build allows for high damage output via stealth skills, risky but I can pull it off. In a pinch the stealth utilities can (and during the beta more often than not) be used to save allies, scorp wire is there b/c its pretty much total badass move and gives extra options on these fights you folks claim are unmeleeable- I laugh at the notion

utils are malleable, other things that can be used are haste, roll, and a venom if its deemed useful (swapping master of decep for venomous aura if desired)

I really enjoyed it. At first I thought stealing was just a way to get to your target. Then I realized that it is so much more. If you use the item that you steal, more times then not it has great benefit. And it doesnt cost anything! Also with the trait "Mug" that damages on steal, I will crit for around 6k on a steal and then another 4 k with the stolen item. I usually open with both venoms applies which turns them into stone so I can get some nice shots off.

I know that the trickery tree was least attractive for me other than the initiative gain. But after trying it out, I really enjoyed having Steal as my main source of damage.

Not full trickery, but close: http://www.gw2builds.org/create/bwe_...5-3.9.6.3.10.9 It's a dagger damage focused build and the two dagger/dagger sets aren't a mistake. You can easily get 11k Backstabs with Assassin's Signet and all of your procs up. Even higher (14k ish) with Vuln stacked up a bit. Although, I found that a venom based spec that uses dagger/dagger + pistol/pistol is a bit more fun and versatile, as you're mostly bursting and resetting with the Backstab build.

It appears that dual dagger combo is the most popular by quite a large margin on other forums. Is anyone going to roll primarily with dual pistols like myself? Or am I alone in this?

Anet already stated that melee does more damage than ranged because ranged has advantages in keeping distance from mobs. You can already see differences in duel dagger vs dual pistol damage. I might still do dual pistol as my offset but i might switch to short bow for more mobility and escape or a control set which i havent looked into much.

i mostly agree with stuff you said, except for underwater fights. i LOVED both underwater weapons, especially the spear. tbh, i think underwater thief is plain op. with the block and the channeled evade that both do good damage, you can pretty much 'tank' anything. and if you need to go ranged or need mobility, the gun offers two strong movement spells (one of which teleports you 1200 range and more, if used right) and a long range cripple.

i gotta say that i did almost no underwater fighting with other classes, so i don't have much to compare it to, but underwater thief was a lot of fun to me. only complaint i really have about it, is that's it seems to be too strong and therefore not challenging enough (once you got all the weapon skills of course).

as for the other weapons, i mainly tested sword+dagger together with shortbow and dagger+dagger together with pistol+dagger. i liked the later setup more do to the high melee damage and still decent utility, as well as the DD (which does huge damage for it's low cost, good range, 5sec cripple and 4-target-aoe) and the CnD in both sets.
btw, "shadow strike" also only works when the melee part hits an enemy, otherwise it will just use up the cost and don't do a shadowstep or shot.

i'm still thinking of going sword+dagger together with either of the ranged sets above for pvp, when there will be more use for an additional evade and double-shadowstep (that also breaks stuns and removes some cc effects, if i remember correctly).my problem with that is though, that the sword damage seems way too low. dagger+dagger has huge damage and amazing aoe with LDB, as well as a good finishing-burst. i think a decent damage buff for "flanking strike" would be a good idea for weapon balance, especially since three of the four sword abilities were nerfed pretty hard during the last months or so (1-slot lost it's cripple, 2-slot now has 600 range instead of 900 and the stealth skill now does daze from behind and guaranteed blind, instead of originally stun from behind and guaranteed daze).

on another note, RfI seems almost a no-brainer to me at this point. for only 50sec cd, you get 1. half of your total initiative 2. a good cc breaker and 3. an evade that covers the huge range of about 2-3 dodge rolls.

also, sy, since you offered...

do me an avatar of this transmute bug
[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/UtEHV.jpg[IMG]

You should totally make a bigger version of my avatar. I DEMAND IT! (pretty please)

i'm afraid that's not really possible, unless you already have a bigger version of it that just needs to be made into the right size. taking a small image like yours and making is bigger usually looks horrible :/